ABSTRACT
Analyses of socialist societal systems agreed, despite differences of analytical approaches and differences among individual socialist societies, on at least one important point: The functioning of socialist systems was characterized by the domination of politics over other spheres of society, espe-daily over the economy. The formation of a democratic infrastructure implies a radical break with the previous political system. The growing “artificiality” of political communication, stimulated by the confinement of politics to political parties, political groupings, and parliament, indicates that the political system is gaining a relatively high operative autonomy from other societal spheres. The fact that political changes are not matched by changes in other societal subsystems can even endanger the newborn democracies’ chances for survival. The new dependence of economy on politics is aptly termed by some analysts as “political capitalism”. The absence of an autonomous economic elite means that the political elite cannot share responsibility for the performance of the economy.
